Bob’s admonition lingers in my mind decades later

         Bob Frazier wrote editorials and columns for The Eugene Register-Guard during my early career as a daily newspaper reporter.

         I looked forward to reading his columns, especially those that described his experience while touring Eastern Oregon.

photo by Brian Lanker

         On one occasion I stuck my head into his office and told him how much I enjoyed reading his recent column.

         “Don’t tell me. Tell me boss,” he barked as he took a pipe out of his mouth and looked at me with piercing eyes.

         After more than a half-century I still see this bald figure who wore a bow tie slouched over a typewriter every time I am prompted to congratulate someone for a job well done.

         I thought of Bob recently as plans are shaping up for the June 29 reunion of former Register-Guard employees in the news, editorial, feature and photo departments.

         Bob’s journalistic career is well documented in a book written by the late Charles Duncan, former dean of the UO journalism school.

         Frazier, like many other Guard employees, attended the University of Oregon’s journalism school, and first worked for the Eugene Daily News.

         For those of us who enjoy (newspaper) history and may yearn for “the good ol’ days,” here are selections from a column Bob wrote and was published on May 21, 1972:

         He wrote:

         When old newspaper people get together, one is likely to say, if sufficiently lubricated, “I used to be an old newspaper man myself, but there was no money in old newspapers.”

         One in which there was no money but a whale of a lot of fun and unforgettable experience was the old Eugene Daily News. It breathed its last 30 years ago this weekend. A pity really. The staff, the greenest bunch of amateur ever to hash up an account of current events, had spirit and morale. Once in a while we’d even find a story before the Register-Guard did. Not often enough, however.

         It was a morning paper — every morning except Monday. The Sunday off was in lieu of more money. The office was in the old Koke-Chapman Building, now long gone, on Broadway, just east of Willamette.

         The equipment was primitive and scarce. Sometimes one of us would have to stand in line to wait for a vacant typewriter.

         The paper lasted 10 years and went through a succession of publishers, all of whom were sadder and wiser after they got out from under….

         Most of the news employees were students who worked there only until (a) they graduated, (b) they could hire on at the Register-Guard or (c) they got drafted. And there were good people among them — a little green but eager.

         I was in the last bunch and personally put out the last Page One, telling of the possibility that Mexico might go to war against Germany.

         Art Litchman, who covered sports, city hall and the church beat, was one of the best reporters and writers I have ever known but “had gaps in his background.”

         One week I decided that Litch ought to have a big story about the fact that it was Easter. So, the church editor sat down at the rickety Underwood and pounded out a lead paragraph:

         “Now it is 1942 years since the birth of Christ…”

         I explained to Litch the difference between Easter and Christmas. Litch fixed everything by subtracting 33. (He later became public relations director for the UO Athletics Department.)

         My job was to run the copy desk, cover the courthouse, the primary election of 1942, handle all the material from our correspondents out in the county and be ever available. If we had a copy editor, I guess I was it, partly because of my superior experience — two months on the Bend Bulletin the summer before.

         The routine was simple. You’d go to college all morning. Then you’d show up for work somewhere between noon and 2 o’clock, winding up the shift around midnight. In between times, you studied.

         The place was run by the brothers McDowell, Jack and Cliff, up from the Hearst organization in San Francisco. They were people of exceptional ability. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the capital to match the ability. Cliff was business manager, Jack managing editor. Jack wrote editorials, but not very many.

         Jack usually went home at a Christian hour, leaving Litch and me with the last details. Litch and I would put out a first edition at 11, to get the trains to the boondocks, and then a final (city) edition at 12.

         Our routine was to go over to Ed’s Depot, across the alley on Broadway, and have a beer and a hard-boiled egg, at 5 cents each, between editions. We could do this because I was making $90 a month and Litch around $75.

         About mid-May the rumor mills were active. The News was about to be sold. Then one night, when ordinary people were just sitting down to dinner, Jack called (staff members) into his office and read a little item that would appear on the next day’s front page.

         The circulation list and “good will” of the News had been sold to the Register-Guard. Then Jack reached into his billfold, pulled out two one-dollar bills and handed them to Litch.

         “Go buy us a pint,” he said.

         Litch did and that was the end of the Daily News.